(San Francisco, Calif.-- 08/27/2009) EPA’s GreenChill Advanced Refrigeration Partnership announced its 2009 partner awards this week, and among the awardees are: Sprouts Farmers Market, Fresh & Easy, Raley’s Family of Fine Stores, Whole Foods, Supervalu (including the Albertsons and Lucky Supermarkets banners), and Hill Phoenix. An EPA cooperative alliance with the supermarket industry, the GreenChill Partnership works with supermarkets to reduce their emissions of ozone-depleting and greenhouse gas refrigerants. Sprouts Farmers Market, which owns stores across California, Arizona, Colorado, and Texas, received a New Partner Award, as did Fresh & Easy and Raley’s Family of Fine Stores. Fresh & Easy can be found in Arizona, California and Nevada while Raley’s Family of Fine Stores is located in California and Nevada. “We look forward to a productive and mutually beneficial partnership with our new partners,” said Keilly Witman, GreenChill Program Manager. “The public wants to do business with companies that share their environmental values. By joining GreenChill, these supermarkets are proving to consumers that they care about the Earth’s ozone layer and climate system.”

New partners pledge to go above and beyond regulatory requirements by measuring and tracking refrigerant emissions that affect climate change and the Earth’s ozone layer, and then setting reduction targets for these emissions. Partners also agree to use only ozone-friendly alternatives in all new and remodeled stores.

“In Raley’s first year as a GreenChill Partner, the company has already taken the lead in the number of GreenChill-certified stores,” said Witman. “Raley’s Family of Fine Stores has received two gold-level store certification awards and two silver-level store certification awards, proof that Raley’s takes the GreenChill mission to protect the ozone layer and fight climate change very seriously.”

Whole Foods, a nationwide chain of supermarkets, received the award for Most Improved Emissions Rate. Supervalu, which is the parent company of the Albertsons and Lucky banners, was recognized for achieving its emissions target in 2008/2009. Refrigeration manufacturer Hill Phoenix also earned a Distinguished Partner Award for its advanced refrigeration technology, including compact chillers and secondary loop systems. EPA estimates that if every supermarket in the nation joined GreenChill and reduced its emissions to the current GreenChill average, the nation could save the equivalent of 22 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and 240 ozone depleting potential (ODP) tons every year, all the while saving $108 million in refrigerant expenses annually.

GreenChill’s founding food retail partners created baseline measurements of corporate-wide refrigerant emissions in 2007 and set goals to reduce those emissions in 2008. These partners reduced their aggregated total corporate emissions rate from 13 percent to 11.9 percent in 2008, an emissions reduction of 8.5 percent in one year.

GreenChill now has a total of 46 partners, including 37 food retail partners with over 6,500 stores in 47 states. For additional information on the EPA GreenChill Partnership, please visit: http://ww.epa.gov/greenchill.- ### -